Friday, 8 April 2016

Burn it Up. Tear it Down.

XVI. The Tower

As I write, the Chariot crowdfunder campaign, successfully funded and one stretch goal up, is over in about (looks at watch) 21 hours. It hit its goal twice over, and that surprised me because I did not know if something that's so very much about my vision, and my very personal imagination would strike a chord with anyone at all. Like a lot of the things I've done, it has attracted a small number of people who are passionately invested in it.

Which is not a thing to be sad about. I'm of course going to keep writing, but as the last post before the finish line, I thought I'd post the last page of the book.

Burn it Up. Tear it Down.

Chariot is complete.

Partly that's because I have never really been a hundred percent for games where you don't feel you have the whole thing unless you have armfuls of books. There might be supplements for Chariot one day, but if there are, they will be entirely optional. The world setting is full of gaps and lacunae, I admit it, but these are there for you to fill in the gaps, and more importantly to fill them in as you play. The setting fits the story. If you decide that Atlantean soldiers develop vril-powered rocketboots, or that there's a city on the coast that I haven't added myself, please, please run with that.

This setting absolutely isn't sacred. If you play a full series of Chariot games to its finish, the setting of the game will be almost entirely gone, and every one of the nobles and rulers I have named will be dead. And maybe your characters will be part of that. In fact, I really would like that, would love you to tear the world to pieces, destroy it all, be present at the demise of the great and the vain, and maybe even be the ones that light the fires, the ones that send the stones hurtling from the sky to demolish the world. At the same time, I want you to save the innocent and the weak, to drag people from the flames, to load the survivors and refugees onto the boats.

You have the job of bringing it all crashing down. Do it. Do it. Do it with a sense of duty and grace. Raise the waves, rain the fire and gravel on the world.